A Good Time to Be Catholic

It is a widespread opinion, confirmed by numerous testimonies, that the intention of electing pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio grew substantially among the cardinals on the morning of Saturday, March 9, when the then-archbishop of Buenos Aires spoke at the second to last of the congregations - covered by secrecy - that preceded the conclave.

Now the notes he used have become public. They show Francis’ first priority, one that made him favorable in the eyes of his colleagues: evangelization.

1) Evangelizing implies apostolic zeal. Evangelizing presupposes in the Church the parresia” of coming out from itself. The Church is called to come out from itself and to go to the peripheries, not only geographical, but also existential: those of the mystery of sin, of suffering, of injustice, those of ignorance and of the absence of faith, those of thought, those of every form of misery . . . .

4) Thinking of the next Pope: a man who, through the contemplation of Jesus Christ and the adoration of Jesus Christ, may help the Church to go out from itself toward the existential peripheries, that may help it to be the fecund mother who lives by the sweet and comforting joy of evangelizing.

The age of evangelical Catholicism has come indeed. For all the problems we face in the Church and in the world, it’s a very good time to be Catholic.